New housing projects in the first 10 months of this year totaled more than NT$980 billion (US$31.44 billion) in northern Taiwan, with presale projects accounting for 85.5 percent, unfazed by legislative efforts to ban their resale, My Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) reported.
Increasing building material prices and labor shortages have prompted developers to slow construction on housing projects and delay their entry to the market, which would further widen the gap, the Chinese-language magazine said.
“Presale projects continue to dominate the new housing market one year after the introduction of bills to ban resale of presale contracts,” magazine research manager Chen Tsai-chi (成采錡) said.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
The bills are intended to cool the property market, as housing prices have soared throughout Taiwan in the past two years on the back of an economic boom and firms shifting manufacturing facilities home from China amid US-China trade tensions, Chen said.
However, the legislature has not made any progress on the bills and might not pursue the efforts in the coming months as an economic slowdown and monetary tightening dampen buying interest, Chen said.
As of last month, presale projects in northern Taiwan totaled NT$844.5 billion, leaving newly completed houses a small share of 14.5 percent, or NT$143 billion, the magazine said.
The Hsinchu area has the lowest ratio of newly completed houses, at 3 percent, or NT$4.17 billion versus presale projects at NT$140 billion, as strong demand amid limited supply left buyers no choice but to target presale projects, it said.
Developers have aggressively launched presale projects in Hsinchu to meet fast-growing demand from cash-flush technology engineers, it added.
Newly completed houses account for 10.8 percent of the market in Taoyuan, which has a total volume of NT$285.1 billion, it said.
In Taipei, presale projects totaled NT$205.3 billion in the first 10 months, while newly completed houses rose 6.2 percentage points to NT$44.24 billion, or a 21.5 percent market share, due to the release of a luxury residential complex in Zhongzheng District (中正), it said.
Newly completed houses totaled NT$57.4 billion, or 17.9 percent of the NT$320 billion new housing market in New Taipei City, it said, adding that the ratio fell 3.4 percentage points from a year earlier.
Newly completed houses shed 11 percentage points to 16.8 percent in Yilan County, while dropping 9.1 percentage points to 18.1 percent in Keelung, it said.
The difference between presale projects and newly completed houses is expected to grow, as developers and builders postpone construction to cope with rising costs, a practice that would shrink the pool of newly completed houses, Chen said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US